


The Earth I Have Measured

by SlowQuotesQuill



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23581420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowQuotesQuill/pseuds/SlowQuotesQuill
Summary: Contrary to what one might have expected, Arthur was the one who leaned in first for a kiss.Short Arthur/FSNGil snippets.
Relationships: Gilgamesh | Archer/Arthur Pendragon | Saber
Comments: 6
Kudos: 93





	The Earth I Have Measured

Contrary to what one might have expected, Arthur was the one who leaned in first for a kiss. 

It was laughable when reasoned out by logic—the King of Heroes probably didn’t even have any solid notion of what a “kiss on the lips” meant. He was literally from a time before time, a time before civilization was even a word. A time when kisses didn't _exist_. 

So when Arthur told him, “Look over here,” and Gilgamesh obliged with an irritated “What is it?”, catching his lips neatly was relatively easy. Somehow the fact that Gilgamesh received Arthur’s action with extreme gracefulness (nothing more than a soft grunt upon impact) was what surprised him the most. 

—He probably shouldn’t have done it in the middle of an aurora-viewing party with the eyes of the Master and Mash and Da Vinci and all the other Servants (some in spirit form and some materialized) watching them in shock, but… well, hindsight is 20/20, as they say. 

* * *

In many ways, it amuses Arthur to watch Gilgamesh partake of his cooking whenever the bored King decides to drop by his room to visit. 

It sounds clichéed, but he makes eating look like an art form. In fact, Arthur cannot conscientiously use the word “eating” to justify what Gilgamesh was actually doing when he consumes food—Heroic Spirits, after all, do not really need to nourish themselves with such mundane things and only eat when necessity strikes (such as suffering from a low mana flow) or when they wish to indulge themselves in the sensation of tasting food like how they used to when they were still human. In short, it can merely be a hobby. 

Perhaps, “savoring” it is a more apt word to describe how Gilgamesh enjoys his food. 

Today, the breakfast Arthur made for the demanding King of Heroes is Anglo-Saxon. It was his first time trying to cook a feast like this again after being summoned by the Master, but Arthur hopes that this being the cuisine he was most confident in, it might please Gilgamesh’s taste buds more than expected—and also, Gilgamesh’s face upon seeing the rather primitive spread laid out on the table makes for a funny picture. 

“What is this poor fare?” is the imperious question, which Arthur thought rather ungrateful, but then Gilgamesh was already seating himself and looking around the simple arrangement. Bread, meat, wine, fruit. All very basic. 

“Just try it,” Arthur decides to tell him, with a snort. 

Arthur neatly breaks off a piece of beef with his fingers, and holds it out to the King. “Here.” Gilgamesh frowned thoughtfully, probably mentally calculating if he should stay or bolt out of the room, and then, like a petulant child, finally opened his mouth and ate the morsel from Arthur’s hand. “It will suffice,” he says with his usual cavalier attitude, but Arthur knows a satisfied customer when he sees one, and he enjoyed Gilgamesh’s exaggerated chewing before digging in to his own food as well. 

* * *

Arthur is still not quite sure when he started falling for this obnoxiously golden Heroic Spirit, but the Master of Chaldea never bats an eye when he first tells her (or at least, attempts to tell her) the news. 

Even before the kiss, the Master has known. She has always known. 

“Master, I, uh…” 

“I’ve always felt that you were somehow similar to the King of Heroes,” she had interrupted him, innocently, and dug into the breakfast that Arthur had prepared for them. “Good for you, huh?” 

“I haven’t even said anything,” Arthur sputters in surprise. 

“Sorry, but I’m not really excited to hear the details of who first shagged who while I eat,” she says wryly. “Congratulations, anyway.” 

—Arthur thinks to himself that perhaps she has known even before he has realized his own feelings, but decides to stay quiet about it. 

_In another world and another lifetime, I may have not even considered liking someone like Gilgamesh, much less loving him._

He’s a difficult person to understand—a man born out of contradictions and lived by contradictions. A lonely observer to a planet doomed to fail itself, again and again, until he himself loses his love for it and destroys it himself. 

…Sometimes, Arthur dreams of a world and a lifetime where Gilgamesh tries to do exactly just that, and the sight of cruel red eyes staring right through him is never not chilling. 

But in this sheltered space in the Very End of the World, within the confines of Chaldea, it is easy to believe that Gilgamesh can never be anything but himself; loud and annoying and prone to tantrums, yes, but sometimes childlike, and as pure and honest and brilliant as his golden armor. 

* * *

“Would it interest you to know that during my long, long sleep in the Throne of Heroes, I have dreamt of another you in another world?” 

“Is this your idea of pillow talk, King of Heroes?” 

Gilgamesh brushes his unruly hair away from his forehead and props his bared upper body up on the bed. His lip was curling into that familiar smirk. “Why, does it bother you to hear me talk about dreams after letting you fuck me?” 

Arthur turns away uncomfortably. “As much as it surprises me to hear you speak so… vulgarly.” 

“Ha! You are sensitive to the most unexpected things.” Gilgamesh’s slender fingers trace a neat line from Arthur’s bare collarbone to shoulder, and Arthur bats him away with a suppressed shudder. “You are too ticklish, mongrel. For such an insipid Heroic Spirit, I swear that every other inch of your skin is a landmine. I should probably start drawing a map of it.” Smirking, Gilgamesh presses his mouth briefly on Arthur’s pale shoulder, a brief loving warning, before quickly sinking his teeth into it. 

Arthur thought that there was a strange feeling of loneliness when he fully drew away. The crescent teeth marks Gilgamesh left behind gleamed wetly on his skin. 

“So what if you have dreamed of me?” Arthur decides to ask him innocently, and the King’s eyes narrow slightly when Arthur throws his bare legs over the side of the bed and started dressing. 

“…No, it is nothing.” He says that, but Arthur just stares at him, knowing that he had wanted to say something else. He strokes Gilgamesh’s fingers splayed on the bed between them as a silent apology, and Arthur sighs. 

“It is unlike you to worry,” he says. “Whatever dreams you may have had of another you and another me in another world, don’t forget that you are you, and I am me, and that this is our present.” Arthur gives his pale fingers a little squeeze. “Isn’t that so?” 

Gilgamesh, unusually, breaks the gaze between them first. 

“I-Idiot,” he mutters, finally. “Of course I’m not worried, mongrel.” 

Arthur smiles. 

* * *

Sometimes, Gilgamesh likes to bite down so hard during lovemaking that he actually breaks through Arthur's skin. 

“You’re mine,” he murmurs in between every love bite, and Arthur can almost taste the blood that runs down his stinging skin, “you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine…” 

Arthur can feel the pain, and the sweet, sweet pleasure of Gilgamesh’s teeth sinking in him once more, relentlessly, hungrily, as if Gilgamesh was a starving man and Arthur the only thing that can satisfy him in the world. 

“Yes,” he murmurs, softly, lovingly, and runs his fingers in those soft golden locks. “Yes, yes, yes…” 

Yours. Yours. Yours, he silently affirms. 

* * *

“How do you say ‘I love you’ in your language?” 

“There’s no direct expression in my country for such an expression,” Gilgamesh replies, lazily. “In our customs, it is known that men are not capable of love, only fear. The only creatures eho can exhibit true love are gods, and gods do not oft say these things out loud.” 

“You’re partly divine,” Arthur parries. “Have you not loved?” 

After a pause, Gilgamesh says, “Once. Thousands of lifetimes ago.” 

“Did you profess your love for them?” 

Gilgamesh laughs. 

“Every hour of every day,” he says, his unbashful honesty surprising even the straightforward Arthur. “But even if I do not speak of it, they already know.” 

“But?” 

“You really are insolent, mongrel.” 

“If you hadn’t told me a hundred times already, I wouldn’t have remembered,” Arthur snarks. 

Gilgamesh turns red eyes on him, and emotionlessly, murmurs, “ _Ze ki-ag gu._ ” 

Arthur raises a pale eyebrow. 

“I always tell them this,” Gilgamesh explains, slight irritation coloring his voice. “ _Ze ki-ag gu._ ” 

“What does it mean?” 

“In very plain terms, ‘You are the earth that I have measured’. Oh, stop looking like that.” Gilgamesh smirks at Arthur’s confused expression. “If you insist on getting a softer, less literal translation, just think of it as saying ‘You are my beloved’.” 

“…Don’t let the Emperor of Roses hear you say that. She'll be insulted to hear one equate love with… soil.” 

“What of it? You are again thinking with your mongrel brain. Love is not always so red and beautiful.” Gilgamesh yawns. “And besides, earth is the most precious thing to my people, after all.” 


End file.
